Midterm election results updates: Dems keep control of Senate with Nevada win

In the hours since Republican Doug Mastriano flamed out of Pennsylvania’s gubernatorial race, losing to Josh Shapiro by double digits in a race that was somehow more lopsided than polls suggested it would be, some of the state senator’s own allies have publicly criticized the campaign.

The autopsies depict a candidate who was untrustworthy of experienced aides, blinded by his support among rural Pennsylvanians, and crippled by a refusal to engage with mainstream press. Mastriano has yet to concede to Shapiro, but he also hasn't indicated he plans to challenge the election results.

“He was nowhere in media. His campaign could not be gotten ahold of. They refused to respond to any opposition media. I think that was a huge mistake,” Jenna Ellis, a senior legal adviser to the campaign, said Thursday on Newsmax radio.

Meanwhile, Mastriano’s hardline stance on abortion was a losing strategy, said Dom Giordano, a Philadelphia-based conservative radio host who interviewed Mastriano several times throughout the fall.

“I don’t believe you can run statewide and ban all abortions, meaning even in the case of the mother’s health, rape and incest. If you say no to those things, meaning no abortions even in those cases, as Doug did, you are not going to win statewide. It is a loser,” Giordano said on his program Wednesday morning.

-ABC News' Will McDuffie

Elise Stefanik, the New York congresswoman who is No. 3 in the House GOP leadership, is endorsing former President Donald Trump in his yet-to-be-announced bid for the presidency.

“Republican voters determine who is the leader of the Republican Party and it’s very clear President Trump is the leader of the Republican party,” she said in a statement. “I am proud to endorse Donald J. Trump for President in 2024. I fully support him running again.”

Trump told Fox News this week that he supports Stefanik for GOP conference chair, saying, "I think she’s fantastic.”

-ABC News’ Brittany Shepherd

Rep. Tony Cárdenas, a Democrat from California, officially announced his run for chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee for the 2024 cycle on Friday. He is the first to jump in the race.

"If you elect me as the next chair of the DCCC, I promise to fight alongside you to win in 2024 so we can continue delivering for working families in the United States and adding to our great progress," he wrote in a letter to House Democrats.

Cárdenas highlighted his experience leading BOLD PAC, the campaign arm of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. If elected as chair, he pledged to improve resources for members, build an "effective" leadership team and invest in communities of color.

Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, the current DCCC chair, lost his reelection race to Republican Mike Lawler in what was one of the biggest victories so far for Republicans this cycle.

"In New York, we defeated the Democrat campaign chairman Sean Patrick Maloney, which will be the first time in over 40 years a DCCC chair lost his reelection," House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy touted at an election night party in Washington, D.C.

-ABC News' Lauren Peller

In a post-election interview, J.D. Vance -- the projected winner of Ohio’s U.S. Senate race -- told Cleveland ABC affiliate WEWS he thinks Donald Trump will continue to have a “major role” in the Republican Party.

"Trump is a very popular figure. I think he's going to continue to have a major, major role in the party moving forward. Look, the effort, I think to finger point at a stage is just really, really counterproductive for what we actually don't know what happened," Vance said.

Trump's been under fire after the anticipated “red wave” didn’t quite materialize this cycle. Several of his hand-picked candidates in Pennsylvania, New Hampshire and other key states lost their races.

But Vance suggested there's a lot more than Trump's endorsements of failed candidates at play in explaining why Republicans didn’t perform as well as they hoped.

"There are a lot of House seats where we still don't know what happened and a lot of Senate seats that are still very much up in the air. And I think that there were a few very clear problems that we should be focused on, like the fundraising disadvantage. That'd be a lot more productive than I think blaming Donald Trump or frankly, anybody else," he said.

-ABC News' Paulina Tam